Vice President Harris at the State of the Union address at the Capitol in Washington on March 7. (Matt McClain/The Washington Post)
Vice President Harris has narrowed her search for a running mate to six finalists and is planning to conduct interviews with them this weekend, according to two people familiar with the process who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss confidential deliberations.
Those finalists are Govs. Andy Beshear of Kentucky, J.B. Pritzker of Illinois, Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania and Tim Walz of Minnesota, as well as Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and Sen. Mark Kelly (Ariz.), the people said. Representatives for Beshear, Buttigieg and Shapiro confirmed that those officials had canceled previously scheduled plans for this weekend.
The vetting of Harris’s potential running mates - an arduous process that typically takes several months - has been condensed to two weeks, after President Biden made the extraordinary announcement July 21 that he would not seek reelection and that he would instead endorse Harris. Since then, Harris’s campaign has embarked on an unprecedented sprint, raising $310 million in July and quickly consolidating support from across the Democratic Party.
Harris is also closing in on the official nomination: Delegates to the Democratic National Convention began online voting for their party’s nominee on Thursday, a process that is scheduled to wrap up by Monday evening. Harris’s campaign has already announced that she and her vice-presidential pick will go on a tour of battleground states starting Tuesday.
Those close to Harris’s campaign had said last week that she was considering roughly a dozen potential running mates. One reported candidate, North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, withdrew from consideration this week, saying it “just wasn’t the right time for North Carolina and for me to potentially be on a national ticket.”
“As I’ve said from the beginning, she has an outstanding list of people from which to choose, and we’ll all work to make sure she wins,” Cooper said in a statement Monday.
The running-mate decision is an early and major test for Harris’s young presidential campaign. Biden picked her as his running mate in 2020 because he wanted someone who shared his values and could immediately be effective on the job - and Harris is said to be approaching the search similarly.
Her reported finalists also are all White men, reflecting assumptions that voters would prefer gender and racial balance with the first Black woman and the first person of South Asian descent leading the ticket.
As he was leaving the White House on Friday, Biden confirmed that he had spoken to Harris about her running mate choice but did not go into much detail. Asked what qualities Harris should prioritize as she makes her decision, Biden told reporters: “I’ll let her work that out.”
